Voskhod

The R-7 Semyorka, the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile, makes its maiden flight. Its descendants (Vostok, Voskhod, Soyuz) will fly for seventy years.

At Korolev's bureau, Feoktistov is a lead designer of the Vostok capsule that carries Gagarin, and then of Voskhod and Soyuz, the engineer who drew the ships.

The day after Voskhod 1 lands, Khrushchev is ousted. The crew that flew for his prestige returns to a different Kremlin. Brezhnev's era of stagnation begins.

To beat the Americans to a multi-crew flight, Korolev strips a Vostok to cram in three: a pilot, an engineer (Feoktistov) and a physician (Yegorov), flying without pressure suits or ejection seats. A propaganda first bought with acceptable risk.

Boris Yegorov, aboard Voskhod 1, makes the first in-flight medical observations by a doctor: vestibular function, cardiovascular response, the beginnings of clinical space medicine.

Selected late and against resistance, Yegorov flies on Voskhod 1 with Komarov and Feoktistov, making the first medical observations of humans in orbit by a doctor.

A civilian engineer, Feoktistov talks his way onto Voskhod 1, becoming the first non-pilot and one of the first designers to fly in his own spacecraft.

Alexei Leonov leaves Voskhod 2 for the first-ever extravehicular activity, and nearly cannot return when his suit balloons; he bleeds off pressure to squeeze back through the airlock. Another first snatched from disaster.

Leonov floats free of Voskhod 2 for twelve minutes, then finds his suit so ballooned he cannot re-enter the airlock; he secretly bleeds off pressure, risking the bends, to squeeze back in.